I think putting the S rank where it was, was simply correct. You explained it whenever it came up: This is a pure power-ranking. And these subclasses ARE the most powerful. So powerful in fact, that you wouldn't recommend playing them. I see how it could be confusing to someone who just glances at the final list and simply assumes it to be a recommendation for play top-to-bottom. But... in my opinion that is kind of on them. That is not what this list is. And you stated so very explicitly and repeatedly.
It would be interesting to see a class/subclass design quality ranking. There are some subclasses which are better designed and arguably more fun to play than a more powerful class - for example, enchantment wizards stuck out to me as having really cool and useful features at every level, while divination wizard is basically just all in on portent.
I know that he hates exhaustion from berserker barbarian and most people would.. But can we all admit it's kind of fun? Or at least I've enjoyed it in the 2-year campaign I played one. I guess it could have been much worse if my DM was crunchy 😅. Mine was trying to kill me with exhaust but with only 2 skill proficiency, 1 exhaust generously grants disadvantage on all skill checks! RP is tough. "sorry team I will need to burn a rage to overcome my disadvantage on athletics checks. Which I'm normally great at.." basically this is a good class o ly if you know you can rest for a few days cuz each long rest resets only one point of exhaustion... I'm ranting it's been an interesting 2 years lol
One critisism I have, is how you treat initiative, at least in the way you talk about it: When a subclass gets a boost to initiative, you treat it as very important, which it is. But when a class naturallly gets a low iniative, you don't treat it as being equally detrimental. I believe this is why Paladins rank higher than you expected, and also a reason why rogues rank lower than expected. Low DEX is, in my opinion, more impactful than this list shows. Loved the series!
Nothing stops you from playing a high-dex Paladin. There are few, if any, features that rely on strength. Smite works equally well with a rapier as it does a greatsword and with dueling the average damage difference between the two only becomes noticeable on the rare occasion you land a crit. The only class I can think of that actually is reliant on strength to use core features is the barbarian. Even it, however, enjoys having a decent dex score. You might have arrow-deflecting pecks, but you need to be quick enough to flex those pecks in time to bounce the arrow off. With Zealot's 3rd level feature, you can play a dex-focused barbarian fairly effectively, with even ranged fighting being able to benefit from divine fury. Sure, you miss out on reckless attack and the general rage damage bonus... But for most of your career in the majority of campaigns that's +2 damage per hit and barbarians generally don't get a bonus action attack worth thinking about. No class really *wants* low dex, it's just some are better able to handle having poor dex. Heck, most classes do better focusing on dex instead of strength.
@@napoleontheclown Nothing stops you, but you lose out on great weapon master and polearm master, the two best feats for a melee character. This makes you a less powerful character, and would put the paladin lower on the list. And if you want to wear heavy armor, you will need that 15 strength. In these rankings, I believe Chris assumes a Strength Paladin, because that's the optimal way to play them. Sure, you can make a functional, or even good dex paladin, but it's not a relevant build for any power ranking discussion.
Correction: There was a math error, and in fact Bard ranked higher than I calculated, and actually ended up 2nd with an average rank of 32. Also, I occasionally get asked for a high-res version of the chart. Lucas on my Discord was kind enough to whip one up: cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/572239762270715905/898615572118511626/SPOILER_chrome_94Scgtim4r.png
Ranger isn't the worse class in the game but it is the most disappointing to play. Why I tell PC to pick a fighter scout & they never listen till they learn the hard way.
@@PUNishment777 Your one of the odd ones. I'm so & so for the ranger. Most think it's going to be like Aragorn or something. I think that's why they get their hopes up then dashed away. I find a lot of 1st time players want to be a ranger not knowing what it is. My least favourite is the artificer as their is no mechanic/tinkers subclass. I don't like any of the subclasses. A artificer ln Latin is for a siege/war engineer. 5e artificer just feels like a janky go-go gadget wizard ranger!
@@arnijulian6241 artificer was better in the 3.5 eberron source book. way more flavorful and much more fun to play, plus in 3.5 base classes were designed to be weak to so it being underpowered was ok, since players were encouraged to take prestige classes or go past level 20
@@arnijulian6241 well, Aragorn seems more like fighter ranger rogue multiclass to me lol, it also hurts that the weakest ranger subclasses are from the players hand book
I don't comment often on the videos, but I just wanted to let you know, I watch just about every single one, without fail. Love your work Chris! - A fellow Canadian D&D enthusiast
When I build characters, I have to consider how optimized the other player's Characters are. No character exists in a vacuum, so If we have an optimized Big Stupid Fighter, it enables the other characters to be more effective at their roles. Wizards are incredible at supporting the party, but without a good melee front, there is a decent chance their poor Hitpoints will catch up with them. It seems like the naysayers complaining about your list don't understand that without optimization at your table, any class or subclass can shine. but when every character is optimized, there is a clear potential difference. This list shows that difference. This is an Optimization Ranking, on an optimization channel. I strongly recommend that we look at the power level of our party, see the holes in composition, and fill it using this table to match where your party is at. At the end of the day DnD is for everyone, but not all DnD is the same. And having a strong party *balance* is what makes a strong party and a better play experience.
the thing is how optimal a thing depends completely on the players' ability to take advantage of the things granted to them and to have fun with it... and manipulate a situation into one where the things that their character is good at matters... I know that in the right person's hands Wizard can easily be the best class in the game but I have a very hard time keeping up with swapping spells regularly to fit an expected situation and for me playing as a wizard is hard to RP so the wizard is not a class that I can play to its full potential easily or really have fun doing without a whole lot of effort. because of this how optimal a thing is to play is highly subjective to the player in question...
A good melee front isn't all that necessary to guarding a wizard in my experience. It can help with the right DM, but really, monsters have no reason to attack the big stupid fighter plopped down in front of them. They have a lot more incentive to just go around him and attack the caster who is concentrating on a spell that is shaping the battlefield singlehandedly. Now, this is assuming that you're fighting monsters intelligent enough to have a concept of tactics complex enough to understand this, so ymmv if you're fighting, like, earth elementals or something, but it can actually be more helpful to be on a team with all ranged characters as a mage, so you can throw out your AoE abilities with reckless abandon.
This is huge. I played an illusionist is one group. Our heavy was a paladin who was very reluctant to hit the front. He often hung back and flung spells. So... our rogue would rush in and tank it. He got supported by our war cleric, who himself would have been better as a frontliner. TLDR: My illusionist control spells were almost useless because no one filled their role, let alone follow any kind of plan.
For the most part I don't think there is that much of a potential difference for most subclasses even when you assume an optimised build in an optimised party - really the disparity show up when you have only a good optimiser player or two in the party, as they can make use of their optimised build effectively while the other players can't. As even the very very best optimised of the not broken subclass builds will only really shine if their skills meet a niche within the party, and be completely overshadowed or look underpowered in comparison if they don't. They are not gods at everything and what they are good at can easily be a hindrance to other members of the party if you don't work together well with it. There are subclasses out there that are rather more broken, and some that require some real player cunning and a decent DM and game style - Monk for instance never ever makes sense for a theatre of the mind style game, as that huge mobility that is really at the core of what makes them useful ceases to be a gain when you don't have the rulers out and a map to show LOS etc. But with a more normal tabletop and a player that uses the terrain strategically as part of the team that monk can be a fantastic party member, and might even shine solo in some cases. Stand alone 1vs1 power rating there are definitely disparities, and again ability to deal with being outnumbered has disparity, however it is a team game, so as long as you didn't all turn up with exactly the same build to face a scenario that is your builds Achilles heel... Also in a situation where its effectively PvP 1vs1 it probably works out through most levels of the game whoever wins the initiative roll wins the fight, as that 'powerful' wizard isn't likely to live through the first turn of a reckless raging barbarian if the barbarian goes first at the lower levels, and may well still get slaughtered even if they did go first right the way up to the mid-late levels even though they did get a turn or two - as if the barbarian makes that save on the big spell... So even though the wizard is in theory the more powerful their fate in a 1vs1 hangs very much on only one or two die roll - a saving throw passed by the opponent or spell attack roll missed matters so much for them, as its an entire turn mostly wasted. But on the flip side they probably do better vastly outnumbered as long as they don't get caught, as all the barbarian has is the bloody minded refusal to say 'ouch'...
Fantastic series! At the beginning I was surprised to see so many of my favorites ranked so low. But I think I now realize that most of the fun of optimizing for me involves the challenge of taking a weak subclass and making it effective. So, now this series has given me a great list of challenges for my next few characters. Thanks for all of this!
Honestly, this series was great as a DM for a party of non optimizers. Helped me realize the weaknesses of base class, so it could help me balance the party by giving our magic items or new learned techniques. Helps give some of the more stagnant classes more variety.
I’ve seen so many of these tier lists from other TH-camrs. Yours are the only ones I’ve seen where it’s actually an objective look and not based off of public opinion or bias. Some of them are so basic they’re just based off general polls!
I think the biggest issue came from people misinterpreting your ranks. It probably was a mistake to use the standard S-F scale, since people have preconcieved notions about what that is, and in the US there is an automatic association with classroom grades. It's hard to see something get a "D" ranking and equate that to "serviceable" when in most other settings a "D" is not an acceptable grade. If they just look at the final chart, they don't catch on that you are ranking based on how much effort is required to optimize the class.
This came up hard on the Rogues, where much of their value comes from non-quantifiable play out of combat and strategies that strongly rely on team coordination. If your team can't really capitalize on either advantage, you're going to have a hard time. Whereas the vast majority of Fighters don't care how random the team is and slot into teams without risk or conditionals.
Yeah. I also think this is how i'd look at this in the future when selecting what I wanna play. so if the rest of my party is picking C-D tiers, I'd do the same. Its only the internal party balance that really matters.
I would agree. instead of "S, A, B, C, D, E, F" I think it should have been "Broken, S, A, B, C, D, Unserviceable". That would have been a lot clearer I think.
@@Vidiri I've never understood why there needs to be an "S" ranking above "A". Why not just make "A" the best? I have a spreadsheet for ranking stats in a different game and the wiki uses the SABCDF scale. I have to make a custom sort setting just to keep the S at the top of the list.
@@DougAdams You said it yourself. >It's hard to see something get a "D" ranking and equate that to "serviceable" when in most other settings a "D" is not an acceptable grade. So if you want there to be four acceptable grades, and 'acceptable' starts at C, there has to be something above A. Of course, it's pretty arbitrary and you could easily have three acceptable grades instead, but Treantmonk must have believed four were needed (not including S).
First of all, lovely series! Glad you mentioned Armorer at the end. That was really the only subclass I took major umbrage with your ranking. But as you said, this is YOUR ranking, and a good one at that.
Probably the variant race from Tasha's, then variant human, then a bunch of ties, especially since you can move the bonuses around now. Most people tend to like a +2 over two +1s, and the option to take darkvision or not is a huge boon as well.
Honestly an amazing series. I was looking forward to every single video and watched all of them. You helped me get away from a "but X class has a great ability starting at level 17" mindset because as you rightfully said many times: most games don't run for that long. It would however be really interesting to see an updated list of classes potential starting level 11 and up, just to see the difference it would make on the list. Thanks for this amazing series!
One aspect of your deep analysis ranking that is interesting is that the Warlock in ranked 7th out of 13 classes ... right in the middle. Making it a great candidate to use to establish a baseline damage scale when comparing other builds. (Which, of course, is what you do, and have always done ... it's just cool to see the output of this analysis bolstering that approach).
At first i would've put the artificer class at around A-tier, but your arguments somewhat convinced me that it should be lower. Although, I still disagree to the full extent. Among the 3 half-casters, artificer has some of the best spells, like web, faerie fire, haste and other really decent ones through subclasses. Things that can give you advantage on martial attacks, i.e. web, ff are exactly what you want in a martial half-caster, and not only that, level 10 spell-storing item allows you to cast those spells through a pet or a tiny servant without impact to action economy. Also the class is completely SAD by itself unlike pal and ranger. Infusions will always have a good use even with magic items in the game; if a magic item slot is already taken, make a different one. Unless everyone in the party is already attuned to 3 magic items, which lets be honest never happens. Just give +1-2 to a spellcaster in the party.
- Level 11 (not 10) spell-storing item is a bit late, even if it's a good ability that helps the casting capacity of the class. It was probably given less importance because of how late you gain the ability. - Artificers are not good damage dealer in comparison to paladins or, to a certain extent, rangers. Only Armorer and Battlesmith gain extra attack. I think the base class end up really close to the Tasha's ranger. I would give them a higher rating then what Treanmonk gave, but not by much. TM said that the rating is mostly baised on how easy it is to optimize the class/subclass. There are so many trap options thorough the class that it is easy for beginners to make bad choices that will make playing the class not fun. Also, the Artificer class is harder to optimize for damage than a ranger or a paladin. I DMed 4 games with an Artificer PC, only 1 player felt like he was helping the group in a meaningfull way. ps: Alchemist is abysmal.
nahhh wayyyy.... i've played the Shepherd Druid and now the Artillerist and my Shepherd would dunk your (and my) Artillerist so hard back down the tier list you'll complain about imbalance. There is way too much optimization needed for the Artillerist and then with all that stuff it became super clunky to play and not much fun. If it got the 2nd attack it should have had the ability to shoot its cantrip TWICE, and all the dice that make up it's optimized attacks i wished were the same dice so turns could be quicker (cantrip d10, extra damage d8?, familiar wand d6's??). It was stupid. Compare that to telling every one i healed them a decent chunk while summoned creatures beat up the enemy artillerists. Shepherd is a one man army. Artillerist doesn't even do what it says it is! A commoner with a longbow delivers the same number of attacks at longer range. They missed the chance to have a character that had a scaling fireball, thus literally laying down some kind of artillery (imo). What ended up happening is i just told my extremely helpful DM that i wanted to homebrew my Artillerist into quick, bang bang, turn done, average hero. I grouped those dice, straight up gave myself a second cantrip attack, and some other fixes. I was also in a party with some random stuff but i'm experienced so i'm telling the long story short. It's fixable, but too clunky in its current form. And it's hard for people to keep track temp hp every round and magic items that aren't life and death important. Players generally wanna keep track of fewer things and not be prompted to adjust temp hp that often, not remember to count charges on your moderately helpful, magic wands and so on. People will take the flying boots tho, that's good. But hey i think i made my point, simpler is best. Quick turns are best. Good design is hard and Artificer has always been hard to design, so i'm not dumping on the effort and the fact we have one finally.
Nah, he’s right. It’s got a slightly better spell list than other half casters, but it’s got poor hit points and vastly inferior weapon capabilities versus them for minimal compensation.
im currently playing a campaign with an alchemist - loving the flavor and the charater but it honestly feels horribly underpowered in almost every respect - even more than i thought it might when i looked at the class initially. At lower levels (pre lvl 10) its pretty dire, Im fairly certain the only reason my character has even managed to survive is that ive optimised him as much as physically possible and am a relatively experienced player, which is a shame as its such a cool idea for a class/subclass but yeah, sadly I agree with Treantmonk, its basically unplayable and I definitely wouldnt reccommend alchemist or even artificier to a new player.
Basically clerics and warlocks are better for 1~2 lvl dips than full classes. Also wizards, sorcs and bards only get going after level 5, and yeah 5 to 12 is the sweet spot in dnd. But imo the paladin is the most constant class in the game. The cleric starts strong but his last great spell is spirit guardians at 5. (Still bards and wizards are great and I don't disagree with the rankings)
I feel like the reason rogue is so low is that there are a few really good rogue classes, especially with a slight multi class like arcane trickster, but there are a lot of rogue sub classes that are very unimpressive and you rarely if ever see those classes played.
I have to agree. I'm having tons of fun with my Inquisitor Rogue, but I've realized that since Aim made Insightful Fighting obsolete I've never used any of my subclass features. They sounded cool, but I've never really been in a situation where they made any difference. I'm just using the Rogue base Features and nothing from the subclass.
It's funny to see Assassin so low and Gloomstalker so high considering how synergistic they are with each other. Thanks for the series. It was great to watch as my party and I come into 5e again to test things out with the newer books.
thank you! I have referred lots of my friends to this series, and we agree with most! thanks for your time and I look forward to everything else you put out.
I expected wizard 1 and was wondering if it was bard or paladin on 2. The paladin deserves 2 in the end, because there is no way to screw up a paladin character. Lay on hands is a solidly scaling healing option, it's almost like a fighter in terms of damage output (smite vs action surge), and I feel like buffing concentration spells are a great way to boost the party without requiring high level spells. At this point paladins are already pretty solid, and then they give the saving throw boost. And this isn't even accounting for their subclasses. It does everything but range and rituals. Btw now that I think about it paladin-wizard-bard might even make the strongest 3 man team. It has a really good team dynamic where a paladin rushes in trying to maximise damage and be a physical obstacle between him and the rest, the bard supports him directly with buffs/debuffs/healing and the wizard throws around encounter ending spells. In terms of utility there is strongman paladin for physical assignments, silver tongued bard to talk through everything and clever wizard to conjure solutions. The only thing not present is stealth, so it might be an idea to get the bard to invest 1 of the expertises into that.
@@claytongrey988 yup, bard taking Pass Without Trace as a magical secret does most of the work to address the stealth issues. Alternatively, an invisible familiar can scout in a pinch.
If a Wizard and a Bard can't figure out how to stealth with spells, do they really deserve those classes? Upcast Invisibility+Pass Without Trace, problem solved.
@@LarsaXL Where do I start with the problem of your comment. All 3 of these spells have verbal components, which inherently doesn't combine with stealth (also a problem with the rogue, but I was thinking about taking the metamagic feat). Per RAW, verbal components have to be spoken at an audible level, which undoes even the opportunity of rolling a stealth roll. Furthermore, invisibility stops as soon as a spell is cast and pass without trace is neither on the bard spell list nor the wizard one, meaning the bard needs to be level 10+ to inefficiently perform your suggested heist. So all in all, you require a level 5 wizard for upcasted invisibility, a level 10 bard for pass without trace, as soon as the (presumably) wizard takes misty step all stealth, as well as invisibility ends, alerting anyone within ~60ft. Dude this is flat out worse then just a plain sorcerer 3 with subtle spell. You might skip components etc., thereby massively buffing casters in your own game, but bards and wizards just aren't supposed to stealth cast their magic without feat investment. Ignoring V, S, M is a big part in why casting is considered op in 5e, and you show your lack of awareness of this very thing with your comment.
@@Olav_Hansen since both of those are long duration buffs, the idea is to cast them before trying to sneak into somewhere, not after you're already in the middle of the enemy barracks. And I don't know why you are bringing up misty step, any character could do something to break invisibility and stealth anyway, the whole party needs to not do those things if they want to be stealthy. The bard could also opt for something like silence at lower levels to help with any stealth efforts.
Excluding exceptional subclasses, my thoughts on where the classes would end up were: Tier 1: wizard>paladin Tier 2: cleric>bard>druid Tier 3: warlock>ranger>sorcerer>artificer Tier 4: fighter>rogue>barbarian Tier 5: monk
Not too far off from Chris' (9:05): C - Bard, Paladin, Wizard D - Druid, Cleric, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock E - Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue F - Artificer, Monk
@@zhangbill1194 I'm including Aberrant and Clockwork as "exceptional subclasses", base sorcerer is the least versatile of all the full casters with their tiny spells known unless you **really** know what you're doing with character building. With standard ranger design being an extra 10, albeit situational, spells too, they are not **that** much less versatile as a half-caster, while their other "half" is a whole-ass Archery SS multi-attacking fighter
I've been more introverted lately, and I've not left as many comments, but I wanted to say congratulations! This has been a great series, and it feels like a great capstone to 5e rankings as 5.5 is being discussed. Thank you for the hours of amazing content. :)
Thanks for the recap! Your overview of the subclass meta has greatly increased my ability to articulate the comparisons you made throughout the series. I will experiment more having seen some of the interesting possibilities you mentioned!
I still think the seven ability score increases a fighter gets should give it a boost AT LEAST over ranking E. That will only get better as more and better feats are published. Though I get that multi classing puts a monkey wrench into that. BTW: Loved this series! I’m brand new to D&D with only two sessions under my belt, and your channel has really helped me hit the ground running. Looking forward to the many wizard characters I have in mind now.
What a journey! You have my favorite of these type of series. In-depth assessments and quality observations, from both your channel and the comments section. Thank you, it helps make my experience of my favorite game that much better
Good series. Something to acknowledge is that overall power of clases based on optimization is not equal to real effectiveness at the table. Player's experience, group's play style and actual levels played influence a lot more. In a tier 1, rookies players table, probably would see rogues and barbarians outshine other clases (except crazy good Moon Druid) until full casters grab 3rd level spells, and even at that point a poor spell selection would hinder the caster character far more than any build decision a martial could make. Optimization is a good metric as long as we asume some expertise from the players and a typical campaign.
I wouldnt mind yearly updates with the new subclasses and changes in opinions. Great series that has taught me a lot both the classes that I play and the ones that I don't. Have a good day!
Will you continue to update this complete ranking as more official subclasses are released? I assume you’ll cover the draconic subclasses. I’d like to see where you’d place them relative to everything else.
So happy you ended up doing this video Chris. Your insights into the game are great. I'm thinking about a feature focused method of character creation buying them with points. To give more options for the players to customize the characters. Loved your variant. Cheers
Really brilliant what you did here, you have given the most comprehensive and I would say, accurate, ranking of subclasses for fifth edition. Happy to see so many wizard subclasses ranked A tier given how good it is as a class. Your guide to the god wizard was what got me into the class and playing a wizard in my current campaign. 10/10
Thank you very much Chris. I really appreciate the enormous amount of time and thought given to this series. I enjoyed all the series and liked that you focused on the lower tiers of play. I've been playing on and off for over 20 years and I can't think of a single long running campaign where any characters got above 15th level, so keeping the analysis to abilities gained early really pushed the point of just how front loaded a lot of the classes are.
It's been fun following the tier lists, and very refreshing to see your opinion being so different from the established norms but also motivated by good analysis.
I think the ancestral guardian barbarian might actually be the strongest barbarian. Not because it deals a lot of damage, because it’s limited in that capacity. But the fact that it’s ability basically gives the rest of the party totem barbarian resistance AND disadvantage vs those attacks. It makes the entire party tankier than you, the barbarian. Reach/thrown/ranged weapon ancestral guardians is amazing. The feature doesn’t require any particular type of attack or weapon. Hell, an artificer that gives you a spell storing item with Scorching Ray can be used since that’s not actually casting a spell while raging.
Fantastic series. Thank you for being so detailed, and also transparent. As a follow-up series, I think it would be great to use this ranking (including the system of ranking, itself) to show the group dynamics that make these classes so good, mediocre, or bad. I think white room comparisons make it hard to visualize the various tradeoffs you discuss. In a couple of your build videos (Echo Knight springs to mind) you use a vtt to illustrate your discussion, and I think it made complex interactions much clearer. Thanks again for the high grade presentations and discussions you bring us.
The Artificer of this edition is the same to me as the bard in 3.5/PF games. It has some neat tricks, some cool flavor, you can still make a fun character out of it. But it is just worst then a lot of other classes out there. And the fix that was rightly identified for it in 5e was just to make it a full caster. Suddenly with that they actually become pretty good.
I'm curious to see what a full caster Artificer would look like. Would you just give them a primary spell progression or change more? Nerf something to balance it out?
Thank you so much for this series! Amazing in depth analysis, help me a lot with seeing potential in classes I had written off without really looking at them!
I really appreciate this ranking. I always respect your opinion as a lot of the time your thoughts either; A. Reflect my own or B. Provide insight that I may never have thought of. Thank you for your quality of work and really being one of those that set the standard for the enjoyment and sportsmanship in this hobby.
TLDR- nice listing and not any surprise. When it is a power ranking this makes a lot of sense. Rogues are skill based. And that support classes that are not the bard are where I expect. It is clear that WotC wanted to increase the power of the clerics as a result you see them as broken. My idea I love to see someone do is the same thing for the other to Pilars of the game and support - the non- power rankings.
Thanks for doing the whole series and this summary video. I will be honest, have not watched them all but the ones that I did gave me good insights. As I commented on another one, I like it that you mainly look at facts and function (and with that take off my rosey rule of cool glasses). Not always agreeing with everything, but (and it pains me as a cleric lover) I completely agree that you say their spell list is holding them back. The more I dived into the class the more I started to feel that way, and you voicing it here has confirmed that. Anyway, please keep doing the great informative videos.
I'm glad you talked about Clerics being "full spellcasters." Recently I've been looking at how iffy melee cleric builds are (compared to instead choosing fighters or paladins or the like, with the appropriate feats and particular racial features) and the automatic defense of "but at the end of the day, you're still a full spellcaster" just didn't hold up - I looked through the spell list Clerics have, and there's a lot of fluff and healing that doesn't come close to the "full spellcasting" ideal. To my current understanding, it's most importantly the Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, and Dodge approach that Cleric wants to get, with the options for some combat-healing like (Mass) Healing Word or Mass Heal and some Bless-type support (usually for weaker combats where you don't want to risk much party damage) and then out-of-combat healing like Aura of Vitality and Healing Spirit. It's not the reality-warping impact that "full spellcaster" implies, just....pretty solid, economic options for crowd damage - a bread-and-butter combat fixture, not the power of a perfect control caster. I love playing Cleric and I do think it's a very strong class, but I feel like people assume there's a lot that they don't know about which must be hidden deep in the spell list when they talk about Cleric, and it's just not there.
I would largely agree, and I think even some of the Cleric spells that get highly praised are not looked at more critically in a practical setting. If you use both Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon, one of them is losing a turn of combat up front since it won't come out until turn 2. On top of that, sure Spiritual Weapon doesn't require concentration because it would simply be awful if it did. It's only useful in tight spaces where its very limited movement speed isn't a problem. I've seen a ton of times where another party member kills the enemy that a SW is next to and then on the Cleric's next turn he can only move it some of the way to another enemy but not close enough to attack. This is only more common in fights with weaker enemies where having many relatively small hits should be at its best opportunity to shine. That doesn't even take into account how many turns from it are lost due to needing to Healing Word, Mass Healing Word, or Sanctuary someone. All of these losses in attacks occur frequently and if you only end up getting 2-3 swings out of it in a 4-6 round encounter, it simply wasn't worth it. Then consider Bless. As you said, people want to use Bless in encounters with weaker enemies because it's a low level spell, but the problem is that Bless is a terrible bonus when you're fighting weak enemies. Bless has very little impact on these fights and is instead at its strongest when fighting very difficult enemies. For one, harder enemies are simply more likely to require saving throws. Secondly, Bless gets better the higher the enemy's AC is. If you already have a 65% chance to hit something, increasing that to 72.5% means you're only going to average 11.5% more hits. In that case, Bless will only add, on average, a single hit roughly every 10 attacks. That's a lot of rounds of Bless doing nothing. However, if you only have a 20% chance to hit something with a high AC, increasing that to 32.5% is a massive swing in combat capability. That's a 62.5% increase in the numbers of hits you're going to land on average. Those same 10 attacks will instead get roughly 6 more hits solely from the benefit of Bless compared to the 1 from the weaker enemy scenario. However, even with all of this, it's still just Bless and using concentration. There are higher level spells that have more direct impact on the battle that you probably want to be concentrating on instead. I really think Bless should lose its concentration requirement when up-cast to a certain level, but that's just me.
@@tarrickmerdev2324 This is a very useful reflection on these spells. What you say about Spiritual Weapon rings exactly true in my experience, for what it's worth - enemies I'm hitting with it oftentimes get zapped by the Rogue, for example, and then I have to hope that 20ft will be enough to get to the next one. Your point about Bless is also well-taken, considering the weak fights are reliably over and done with very quickly. It feels like Spirit Guardians is basically a class feature of Cleric.
This was a great series and really enjoy the rational behind this ranking. I do have to say that I'm a little surprised with the Lore Bard being behind all but 2 wizards sub classes. Sure, it doesn't have the amount of options a wizards has and can't recover spell slots, but the Bard's spell list is so versatile (and has healing, which it isn't on the Wizards' spell list ), especially with Tasha's additional spells, more so with the Lore Bard being able to grab any spell that they don't have access to at 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th. They are the best at countering spells (by taking counterspell at 6th) and cutting words works a little bit like a counter-attack. Then they are also the most skilled sub-classes (most skills + expertise), gets a boost to initiative (Jack of all trade),a little better HD, and armor and weapon prof, which prevents the "Mage Armor" tax...So I feel like Conjuration, Necromancy and Transmutation don't offer much compared to the Lore Bard potential.
Arcane Archer with Grasping Shot and any method to force movement is great. The Telekinesis (feat) comes to mind but Genie Warlock dip or Swarm Ranger dip... or even taking some maneuvers via feats (you can get two dice this way) are also possible. The damage is triggered each turn the enemy is moved, so your party can also get in on it. There are so many forced movement options now this is really easy to optimize around as a party. It doesn't scale until 18, but right away at level 3 we can add 4d6 damage on our first turn + probably 2d6 on the enemies turn if it tries to move back. And then another 2d6 on each of our turns and the enemies turns after. That's really great for level 3. I also love that the Piercing Shot adds damage from the arrow to multiple enemies. With magic bows and magic arrows that provide a boost to damage, we can be potentially adding a decent bonus to this line attack on multiple enemies. In our game, +2 arrows are pretty easy to purchase because they're consumable. I buy those up and then use them with my +1 bow and then use them when I can line up 3-4 tougher enemies.
Really was a great series looking forward to your next one. While being able to cover a wide range of abilities is great specialization is why you have a party. Sure clerics aren’t going to be able to deal crazy damage or teleport but that’s not their job. Yeah the cleric only has a hammer but the wizard has a wrench and the fighter a screw driver.
Such an enjoyable series! You provided deep analysis and some really great insight based on experience. I don't play very often, but I think meta gaming is a lot of fun and every point in the videos was backed up with solid data. Not much more to ask.
Thank you for making this, and especially for weighting it strongly toward the levels people actually plays. I've been playing for years and in my experience, pretty much everything is played at levels 3-11 with the last couple sessions of a long campaign reaching as high as 13-14. And some start at 1 only to rush the first couple levels.
I really enjoyed the series, the simple fact that you gave higher value to the lower level abilities and flat out ignored the high level/capstones was such a good idea. I see way too many people talk about capstones or really high level abilities to justify how good or bad a class/subclass is when in realty practically nobody will ever play it at that level. Taking a very practical, consistent approach was the best way to do this, so well done!
this video series was great, and super educational. Thank you for doing such a deep dive on all the classes and subclasses, this will be a great resource for future character building!
I don't see Pipes of Haunting as that narrow in purpose (or mind sharpener). 3 uses a day. No friendly fire. Massive AoE. Great effect. No concentration. It's just really, really good. Overall though, I don't think you're far off where I did disagree and I LOVED the series and appreciate you making it. If I think back to other TH-camr tier lists, this one feels to me like the best. It teaches you to analyze abilities too, instead of just take your first reaction, which I love.
The biggest issue I have with Monks as a DM is they are as disruptive as the Problematic Subclasses to my campaigns but in a different way to those subclasses. The two biggest things being: how often Long/Short rests can happen, and not only how often I can put in encounters but also the entire way I can design encounters in general to make the Monk player feel useful and not overshadowed. My group is very Roleplay Heavy (like, Critical Role levels of RP Heavy) so I tend to have Long and Short rests happen when it would make narrative sense to do so (which solves the "Resting in a Dungeon" issue because my group realises how little sense it actually makes from a Roleplay point of view). Having someone play a Monk means I really have to start giving more chances at a Long or Short rest, even during parts of the campaign where it's supposed to be a marathon for the characters, maybe they're trekking through some gruelling terrain to beat the BBEG to thier destination and can't rest. Maybe they are on the run and need to keep moving. Maybe my players wanted a more gritty survival heavy campaign with fewer chances to rest. Monks needing more frequent rests throws a huge spanner in the works. I'm not saying I never want people to play it, but I need to redo a lot in a campaign and try to have it so there's a Long/Short rest every 1-2 encounters, smiliar to in Critical Role, and I also have to work in more monsters that aren't just going to pass every CON save, or having more encounters with one bit monster so the Monk gets to feel strong by getting to pull out Stunning Fist at an important time, and not have to worry about the fact they had to dump all of thier Ki Points to do that. The problem with this is pretty obvious when you also have players with Paladins, Fighters and Warlocks who can dump disgusting amounts of DPR into one single entity. So I end up having to inflate thier HP so the rest of the party goesn't get bored of One Rounding an encouter that should be the epic end to a Narrative Arc for the party for the nth time while also making sure I don't use things with too high a CON Save so the Monk still feels like they are doing something useful and not make it look like I'm fudging saves to make them feel useful. Without a Monk I can actually get far more creative and varied with the sorts of combat encounters, roleplay and survival situations I can put my players into. It's a shame really because I do love the class thematically and the subclasses ooze flavour and I hate discouraging people from taking something they really like, but honestly as a DM I find them just as disruptive as a Problematic Subclass, hialriously for similar reasons.
One thing about this chart is that you have to assume the player has a decent amount of game knowledge for it to hold true. Our CoS game has a twilight cleric and they are far from broken mainly due to the player playing extremely suboptimally. (He thinks turn undead is better then twilight sanctuary and preps bad spells). The subclass keeps him from being useless but our druid and sorlock who are run by optimizers are far more potent simply due to the players being more knowledgeable.
Biggest change I would make is bump Bladesinger over Enchantment. A lot of groups/DMs have ways of generating stats that are higher or much higher than point buy; the bladsinger I think the most of any subclass benefits from this (and monks). Most groups do not have very many challenging battles per long rest so you have enough bladesongs. Bladesinger can multiclass really well with 2 levels of paladin. Doing the math it's easily superior to any hexblade/eldritch smite build. Without multiclassing it can be better than most martials at almost everything, delivering more damage in more versatile ways and having higher AC, plus shield/absorb elements ect. Large temporary hit point boosts or great ways to heal allies during combat from party members are very common now which greatly mitigates their one weakness. On top of being a superior martial they can be a superior full spell caster whenever they want. Versatility is commonly underrated in game mechanics analysis in general. Things like adventurer's league, or groups in flux are common these days for DnD players, the game is designed such that having a healthy of mix of martials/casters or party rolls is crucial to good party dynamics and success. Having the ability to be a great marital or great full caster from one battle to another, or turn for that matter, is phenomenal, no other subclass can do it nearly as well.
I personally agree with your analysis of the subclasses, and can see your rankings making sense based on your own explicitly stated criteria. My *personal and subjective* opinion is different with the rogue and the bard, for example, because I rank skill checks higher than saving throws, just because in the games I've played they are more common out of combat, which is most of my play time. I just have more fun in story, RP and exploration, than in combat. I also rank combat versatility higher than combat damage, too. Like, I prefer to have more options for different situations with my bonus action and action, than being able to go nova or high DPR. But that is just me and I completely agree with your assessment, based on your own preferences. Your series of videos ranking subclasses is amazing. Thanks for doing all this work and sharing!
I think one of the problems the rogue ran into was exactly that. So much of the power distribution was spent on skills and combat evasion, just to make the rogue function in its power fantasy. I feel the devs mistook that to mean rogues were particularly powerful, and their subclasses suffered for it.
First thank you for taking the time to put this all together, You are very upfront about your biases and your rankings following your line of thinking, thank you for all the insights into how you have come to your P.O.V. Two things, the Paladin's Aura of Protection I view more as a walking target than a strong feature. Too many times a clump of PCs becomes the target of an AOE that, despite the boon, creates too much loss of resources for that side of the conflict. Second thing, I think I figured out why I love the rogue's no limited resources so much. As a person I struggle with resource management decisions. "Is this the time I need to lay down the big boom, or do I need to save that for the next epic battle I may face that day?" With the rogue I don't have any of that, I just need to set up my sneak attack and hope for a good roll to do what I consider noteworthy damage.
I would say that I can see the clear difference between Spell caster and Martial classes in two different major ranks. I would agree that spell casters do have an advantage over martial, but martial also have an advantage role is to be a heavy hitter, damage dealer. Which on its own will be lesser compare to spell casting but on a team will be an as essential importance. Which actually makes the lower end of spell casters actually being worse received than the higher end of the maritals. For example, I think fighter on it's own is probably weaker than a cleric but probably stronger in team because fighter is in higher rank among damage dealers and cleric is among lower end of spell casters. I think it would be better to divide different major rolls to set ranks(while a character can perform multiple rolls, like paladin is both a good damage dealer and team support(the damn good aura)). This will show a more clear image of which subclass would be stronger.
TMT, your list is as close to accurate as the community is likely to find. Well done and I look forward to your future works. As well, I've made comments in your previous videos that are almost all addressed within this video. Which shows you are paying attention to the criticisms and are incorporating them into your analysis. This is a mark of a balanced thinker and I commend you further for this. It's a good quality and it is not going unnoticed... One thing I might add though is that while you do give AC its due by exalting the Valor Bard, the inverse doesn't seem to be acknowledged with the relative weakness of the Wizard and Sorcerer. This, I think, is the incongruency in the evaluation among at least the full casters. Yes, the Cleric has a limited 'real' spell selection, but what is the advantage of armor and more spells known versus less actual spells known and no armor for the Sorcerer? What is the downside to the Wizard against all other full casters for said same? This I think is not properly accounted for. To be sure, there is an assumption that a Wizard or Sorcerer being protected by his group while in the back line is still equal footing... When it is not. We should take this into account, no?
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I'd love to see your opinion on how to fix/tweak the F, E and S ranks (aside from monk, obviously) Also, Blood Hunter ranks/fixes - but I guess you already mentioned it on the earlier videos that you were not doing it
This was very insightful. I made like a homebrew 5.1 edition change of every class and subclass to make them all fall within the A-C range. Practically everything I nerfed was in your S rank, and buffed almost everything of D-E-F. So it was nice to see your view on the power of the (sub)classes and see it backed up by this data. The only thing we disagree on is the Hunter and the Swashbuckler. I have the hunter in C tier and the Swashbuckler in B tier.
I just don't understand why Artificer would be ranked so low. While they're half casters, they get spellcasting from first level, and you round up for spell slots when multiclassing rather than round down like the Paladin and Ranger. Multiclassing with a dip into Wizard or Fighter for this class is just so much fun. They have proficiency with shields, medium armor and for Constitution saves from the start. Like Clerics and Druids, they have access to Guidance, which means they can add 1d4 to almost every Initiative roll or ability/tool check that may come up. Perfect with Thieves' Tool proficiency or any knowledge check. By RAW, they can get access to any Level 1 spell in the game with Replicate Magic Item - Spellwrought Tattoo. Sure, you can only cast it once and need a long rest to reapply another tattoo, but this means you can never starve thanks to Goodberry, and you have access to at least one cast per day of either Find Familiar, Shield, Zephyr Strike, Bless, Hex or Shield of Faith. And familiars don't disappear or have a time limit. This perk alone is incredible. Magical Tinkering is often viewed as a lesser version of Prestidigitation or Thaumaturgy, but its effects are permanent and could be used to create permanent light sources that work underwater, rags that smell good and help protect against the Stench ability of monsters such as Troglodytes, smelling salts to awaken unconscious characters, and more. The way spellcasting works for the class, every single Artificer spell has an "M" component when you cast it, meaning you can ignore all "S" components, since a spellcaster can use the same hand to hold a spellcasting focus for material components and perform somatic components. Select the Calligrapher's Supplies as one of your tool proficiencies and either purchase a Signet Ring for signing documents or obtain one from the Noble background, and you can probably use the ring as your spell casting focus, letting you hold a weapon. Wear an ink bottle as a pendant, or hide an ink pen in your shoe and you'll always have a spellcasting focus on you if you get captured. It's one of the classes that starts at Level 1 with the highest amount of gold (for the class's starting equipment, you can select three Light Crossbows and sell all three). The Telekinetic, Fey-Touched, Shadow-Touched and Aberrant Dragonmark feats are so good for this class if you have access to them, bumping up your Int or Con to 18 or 16 while grabbing some very useful spells. If the Optional Rule: Firearm Proficiency feature is allowed, that also means the class qualifies for the requirements of the Fighting Initiate feat, in case you'd rather increase your AC, gain Blindsight, or increase your damage. I'm seeing a lot of good stuff here.
Artificer is a half-caster with mechanics of full-caster. They are worse warlocks. Two of the four subclasses have to rely on cantrips (!) to deal damage, and they aren't good enough in it. Armorer has very limited damage and its other bonuses aren't strong enough to make up for that, and Battlesmith is the decent one but nothing more, a C tier by Treantmonk standards. About Artificer's core features... they are almost pure utility, and utility is very hard to value properly. Infusions are just magic items, which some tables would have no shortage of, and other features are quite minor until you get Spell-Storing Item that comes relatively late. Spellwrought Tattoo thing is something I believe is just an oversight from developers and shouldn't be considered as a proper strength - the feature specifically forbids creating Spell Scrolls, and Spellwrought Tattoo is basically the same thing but named differently. Not saying that Artificers are weak - I agree that Treantmonk undervalued them a bit, but I can see his reasoning. Plus, in the end, they didn't end up *that* bad, 10th out of 13th place. Fighter and Ranger are pretty fair competition for them, they just do things that Treantmonk prefers better, but I could see those three being switched around.
Chris thanks so much for your work. Just like your other Guides before this changes how I view the game and mechanics. It's an invaluable to tool that I've already benefited from when i created my current Gloomstalker. I like the insider knowledge and your insight has already made my games better!!
It would be fun to create a multiclass video based on this ranking. Example take 2 B rank subclasses and see if they outperform a A or S rank. Even more if the are from a lower ranking.
The one thing I want you to think about when ranking this class and subclasses. A lot of games will roll there stats instead of the standard array, some subclass can do lot better then othere with those good 4d6 rolls where some class just do terrible with bad 4d6 rolls. You should do a video rating class with how stat playing style and do one with ranking if you have generous DM or good dice roll.
Really enjoyed this series and the thought you put into your system and rankings. I would love to see a build featuring armorer, because I love the flavor. You seem intrigued by it as well and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to optimize it.
I appreciate this list and all the work you put in it. Very well made and designed. Most rankings I agree with or have my own biases I admit to. I’d rank artificer higher, but the games I’m involved with usually rarely have many magic items and at least half are not useful or niche utility items. Like a magical luggage set. My last campaign ended with more than one person having a weapon of more than +1. Which is the only time it happened, same for armor. So being able to infuse items and make what we want using said infusions is really useful. It is definitely a class designed around its subclasses so I agree that a bare bones artificer wouldn’t be real great. Again! Thanks for everything, you’re awesome and have given me things to think about.
Awesome series, glad you did this recap it was super interesting. I thought cleric or bard would be second best, but this all makes sense. I'm glad that druids got the love they deserve, I think they are severely underrated (aside from people playing moon druid).
It's been a great ride so far! Always appreciate your content. One takeaway I had from this series: Swordcoast Adventurer's guide has shitty subclasses.
I just want to say I am really impressed with this and thank you! Just to share with you where my ranks are even though I haven't done as much research but they were similar. The biggest discrepancies were Paladin, Cleric and Artificer. 1. Cleric 2. Druid 3. Bard 4. Wizard 5. Sorcerer 6. Warlock 7. Artificer 8. Paladin 9. Ranger 10. Fighter 11. Rogue 12. Barbarian 13. Monk My biases are I like versatility, I have played more at low levels (at higher levels I'm sure the wizard would be higher), I rarely receive magic items from my DM and when I do they aren't typically ones I want, I have a hard time justifying a non caster above a half caster and a half caster above a full caster. I have played with DM's who make long rests difficult to come by. My issue with Paladin is it feels like they could blow all their resources in 2 rounds and then they arent any good after that. But to be fair I cant think of a class I would rather have in a high level boss fight that was fully rested than a Paladin.
I definitely see the ranger tied or above with fighter, because they unlock 3rd level powerfulls spells (such as Conjure Animal) at lvl9 and a third spellslot at lvl11, when the fighter unlock a new extra attack at lv11. The fighter can only compensates it with his one (or two) extra ability score improvment and buy powerfull feats with
I hope you do end up making an Arcane Archer build. It's a subclass I've always liked thematically and I'd like to see it work. In general, I personally prefer to see optimizers taking on the challenge of making weaker options work as opposed to just seeing a slight variation on an already proven build (unless there's some major twist added on). There's a lot of cool flavor attached to subpar class options and it's always appreciated to see effort put into redeeming them.
One "standard" way to eliminate the outliers is to use the median instead of the mean. For those less math-minded, that means the rank of the middle subclass in the group. If you do that, the rankings are different. However, they still end up in the same group (high, middle, low). The warlock is perhaps the most interesting with a bi-modal distribution. 4 high and 4 low. 1) Wizard - Bladesinger (19) 2) Bard - Glam/Swords (27) 3) Druid - Stars (37) 4) Paladin - Glory (41) 5) Cleric - Life (53) 6) Warlock - Fathomless/Celestial (39/77) 58? 7) Sorceror - Draco/Wild (62/70) 66? 8) Ranger - Beast (74) 9) Fighter - Eldritch/Arcane (76/83) 79.5? 10) Barbarian - Totem/Storm (80/91) 85.5? 11) Rogue - Scout (94) 12) Artificer - Artificer/Armorer (98) 13) Monk - Open Hand (110)
So I decided to make a spreadsheet for this: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11jacKYSavssSPw7MJTEtaRp3wghlSF1jbGW7QhhhQc0/ The mean of all the subclasses is useful for gauging many people taking completely random choices. The median is similar, however, it ignores the extremes (which is sometimes good, sometimes bad). However, neither really does anything for when people have a rough idea of what is good, or have looked through the subclasses quickly and picked the best looking ones to then choose from randomly. To this end, I wanted to see the effect of taking the top 4 subclasses for each class and taking the average of those. Here are the results: # Class Avrg 1 Wizard 6.00 2 Druid 21.25 3 Bard 22.00 4 Cleric 23.50 5 Warlock 24.00 6 Paladin 24.25 7 Sorcerer 26.50 8 Fighter 45.00 9 Ranger 54.00 10 Barbarian 76.25 11 Rogue 79.00 12 Artificer 87.25 13 Monk 101.50 The major thing I noted here is how, other than the Wizard, there is a very close grouping for the full casters and Paladin. In fact, I would say they are almost equal. Afterwards, the values spreadout a fair bit for the other half casters and non-casters. However, perhaps just the top 3 might be a better fit for randomly picking amonst the best?: # Class Avrg 1 Wizard 5.33 2 Cleric 15.67 3 Druid 16.00 4 Warlock 19.33 5 Sorcerer 19.33 6 Bard 20.33 7 Paladin 21.00 8 Fighter 35.00 9 Ranger 47.33 10 Barbarian 75.00 11 Rogue 75.33 12 Artificer 80.00 13 Monk 99.33 Two classes (Cleric and Druid) have formed a noticeable lead over the other others in that grouping, breaking that close grouping amonst those 6. That said, the close groupings still exist for 4-7. I then wanted to see what happened if I ignored the S-Tier subclasses that are meant to be broken, and then take the next top 3: # Class Avrg 1 Wizard 6.67 2 Warlock 19.33 3 Sorcerer 19.33 4 Bard 20.33 5 Paladin 21.00 6 Druid 27.33 7 Fighter 35.00 8 Cleric 46.67 9 Ranger 47.33 10 Barbarian 75.00 11 Rogue 75.33 12 Artificer 80.00 13 Monk 99.33 This is very interesting. It has pushed Cleric down to being just above the Ranger, and substantially below the Fighter - Echo Knight and Rune Knight are doing pretty well and dragging Fighter up a fair bit. Druid is also pretty hurt, with only Shepherd hitting particularly well here and then Druid being dragged down by the next two subclasses. Clerics and Druids were the two that pulled away previously, showing that the top subclasses are really dragging them up in the averages. Oh, and Wizard doesn't seem to care what we do. To finalise it all, the top of each, without S-Tier: # Class 1 Wizard 5 2 Sorcerer 6 3 Druid 9 4 Bard 10 5 Warlock 11 6 Paladin 16 7 Fighter 20 8 Ranger 21 9 Cleric 44 10 Artificer 58 11 Barbarian 68 12 Rogue 72 13 Monk 85 Hopefully, someone finds that as interesting as I did.
As someone who made and is playing an Armourer build, I think your ranking is spot-on. The only build that can really work is a dedicated tank build, and even then pretty much the only reason it manages to "work" like that is because your other options are like... the shitty dueling spell and Ancestral Guardians, and unlike either of them this one can theoretically work 24/7 since it's not tied to any resources.
I was going to argue this because you can make other builds but then I realized that it really takes a bunch of work to make those builds. Like using a homunculus to throw magic stones and/or an animate object to use wands while you blast as well. That's cool but does take a lot of set up and work to actually pull off.
I think putting the S rank where it was, was simply correct.
You explained it whenever it came up: This is a pure power-ranking. And these subclasses ARE the most powerful. So powerful in fact, that you wouldn't recommend playing them.
I see how it could be confusing to someone who just glances at the final list and simply assumes it to be a recommendation for play top-to-bottom. But... in my opinion that is kind of on them. That is not what this list is. And you stated so very explicitly and repeatedly.
I think the response was from people sharing the list on reddit and people not doing their due diligence to watch the video before reacting to it.
Agreed.
YUP. l-o-g-i-c
I agree.
I don't personally like the tier scaling or what each tier represents. It's a messy and misleading system in my opinion.
It would be interesting to see a class/subclass design quality ranking. There are some subclasses which are better designed and arguably more fun to play than a more powerful class - for example, enchantment wizards stuck out to me as having really cool and useful features at every level, while divination wizard is basically just all in on portent.
Check out indestructoboy on YT he's done more of a design ranking
I think you mean engaging classes, where the mechanics encourage playstyles that akin to the theme. The swashbuckler has to be up there.
I know that he hates exhaustion from berserker barbarian and most people would.. But can we all admit it's kind of fun? Or at least I've enjoyed it in the 2-year campaign I played one. I guess it could have been much worse if my DM was crunchy 😅. Mine was trying to kill me with exhaust but with only 2 skill proficiency, 1 exhaust generously grants disadvantage on all skill checks! RP is tough.
"sorry team I will need to burn a rage to overcome my disadvantage on athletics checks. Which I'm normally great at.." basically this is a good class o ly if you know you can rest for a few days cuz each long rest resets only one point of exhaustion...
I'm ranting it's been an interesting 2 years lol
One critisism I have, is how you treat initiative, at least in the way you talk about it:
When a subclass gets a boost to initiative, you treat it as very important, which it is.
But when a class naturallly gets a low iniative, you don't treat it as being equally detrimental. I believe this is why Paladins rank higher than you expected, and also a reason why rogues rank lower than expected.
Low DEX is, in my opinion, more impactful than this list shows.
Loved the series!
Nothing stops you from playing a high-dex Paladin. There are few, if any, features that rely on strength. Smite works equally well with a rapier as it does a greatsword and with dueling the average damage difference between the two only becomes noticeable on the rare occasion you land a crit.
The only class I can think of that actually is reliant on strength to use core features is the barbarian. Even it, however, enjoys having a decent dex score. You might have arrow-deflecting pecks, but you need to be quick enough to flex those pecks in time to bounce the arrow off. With Zealot's 3rd level feature, you can play a dex-focused barbarian fairly effectively, with even ranged fighting being able to benefit from divine fury. Sure, you miss out on reckless attack and the general rage damage bonus... But for most of your career in the majority of campaigns that's +2 damage per hit and barbarians generally don't get a bonus action attack worth thinking about.
No class really *wants* low dex, it's just some are better able to handle having poor dex. Heck, most classes do better focusing on dex instead of strength.
@@napoleontheclown
Nothing stops you, but you lose out on great weapon master and polearm master, the two best feats for a melee character.
This makes you a less powerful character, and would put the paladin lower on the list.
And if you want to wear heavy armor, you will need that 15 strength.
In these rankings, I believe Chris assumes a Strength Paladin, because that's the optimal way to play them. Sure, you can make a functional, or even good dex paladin, but it's not a relevant build for any power ranking discussion.
Correction: There was a math error, and in fact Bard ranked higher than I calculated, and actually ended up 2nd with an average rank of 32. Also, I occasionally get asked for a high-res version of the chart. Lucas on my Discord was kind enough to whip one up: cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/572239762270715905/898615572118511626/SPOILER_chrome_94Scgtim4r.png
Ranger isn't the worse class in the game but it is the most disappointing to play.
Why I tell PC to pick a fighter scout & they never listen till they learn the hard way.
@@arnijulian6241 I like playing ranger
@@PUNishment777 Your one of the odd ones. I'm so & so for the ranger.
Most think it's going to be like Aragorn or something. I think that's why they get their hopes up then dashed away. I find a lot of 1st time players want to be a ranger not knowing what it is.
My least favourite is the artificer as their is no mechanic/tinkers subclass. I don't like any of the subclasses.
A artificer ln Latin is for a siege/war engineer. 5e artificer just feels like a janky go-go gadget wizard ranger!
@@arnijulian6241 artificer was better in the 3.5 eberron source book. way more flavorful and much more fun to play, plus in 3.5 base classes were designed to be weak to so it being underpowered was ok, since players were encouraged to take prestige classes or go past level 20
@@arnijulian6241 well, Aragorn seems more like fighter ranger rogue multiclass to me lol, it also hurts that the weakest ranger subclasses are from the players hand book
Wow. I can't believe how much work you put into this. Thank you!
I don't comment often on the videos, but I just wanted to let you know, I watch just about every single one, without fail. Love your work Chris!
- A fellow Canadian D&D enthusiast
Thank you!
Vancouver over here!
I'm in Ottawa, Ontario! :D
Manitoba!
oh shit, i thought he was American. I'm so much prouder now. X-) Nova Scotia here.
When I build characters, I have to consider how optimized the other player's Characters are. No character exists in a vacuum, so If we have an optimized Big Stupid Fighter, it enables the other characters to be more effective at their roles. Wizards are incredible at supporting the party, but without a good melee front, there is a decent chance their poor Hitpoints will catch up with them.
It seems like the naysayers complaining about your list don't understand that
without optimization at your table, any class or subclass can shine. but when every character is optimized, there is a clear potential difference. This list shows that difference.
This is an Optimization Ranking, on an optimization channel. I strongly recommend that we look at the power level of our party, see the holes in composition, and fill it using this table to match where your party is at.
At the end of the day DnD is for everyone, but not all DnD is the same. And having a strong party *balance* is what makes a strong party and a better play experience.
the thing is how optimal a thing depends completely on the players' ability to take advantage of the things granted to them and to have fun with it... and manipulate a situation into one where the things that their character is good at matters...
I know that in the right person's hands Wizard can easily be the best class in the game but I have a very hard time keeping up with swapping spells regularly to fit an expected situation and for me playing as a wizard is hard to RP so the wizard is not a class that I can play to its full potential easily or really have fun doing without a whole lot of effort.
because of this how optimal a thing is to play is highly subjective to the player in question...
A good melee front isn't all that necessary to guarding a wizard in my experience. It can help with the right DM, but really, monsters have no reason to attack the big stupid fighter plopped down in front of them. They have a lot more incentive to just go around him and attack the caster who is concentrating on a spell that is shaping the battlefield singlehandedly. Now, this is assuming that you're fighting monsters intelligent enough to have a concept of tactics complex enough to understand this, so ymmv if you're fighting, like, earth elementals or something, but it can actually be more helpful to be on a team with all ranged characters as a mage, so you can throw out your AoE abilities with reckless abandon.
This is huge. I played an illusionist is one group. Our heavy was a paladin who was very reluctant to hit the front. He often hung back and flung spells. So... our rogue would rush in and tank it. He got supported by our war cleric, who himself would have been better as a frontliner.
TLDR: My illusionist control spells were almost useless because no one filled their role, let alone follow any kind of plan.
You got it upside down m8. The purpose of the Wizard is to make the Big Stupid Fighter shine, not vice versa. Well, a little maybe.
For the most part I don't think there is that much of a potential difference for most subclasses even when you assume an optimised build in an optimised party - really the disparity show up when you have only a good optimiser player or two in the party, as they can make use of their optimised build effectively while the other players can't. As even the very very best optimised of the not broken subclass builds will only really shine if their skills meet a niche within the party, and be completely overshadowed or look underpowered in comparison if they don't. They are not gods at everything and what they are good at can easily be a hindrance to other members of the party if you don't work together well with it.
There are subclasses out there that are rather more broken, and some that require some real player cunning and a decent DM and game style - Monk for instance never ever makes sense for a theatre of the mind style game, as that huge mobility that is really at the core of what makes them useful ceases to be a gain when you don't have the rulers out and a map to show LOS etc. But with a more normal tabletop and a player that uses the terrain strategically as part of the team that monk can be a fantastic party member, and might even shine solo in some cases.
Stand alone 1vs1 power rating there are definitely disparities, and again ability to deal with being outnumbered has disparity, however it is a team game, so as long as you didn't all turn up with exactly the same build to face a scenario that is your builds Achilles heel...
Also in a situation where its effectively PvP 1vs1 it probably works out through most levels of the game whoever wins the initiative roll wins the fight, as that 'powerful' wizard isn't likely to live through the first turn of a reckless raging barbarian if the barbarian goes first at the lower levels, and may well still get slaughtered even if they did go first right the way up to the mid-late levels even though they did get a turn or two - as if the barbarian makes that save on the big spell... So even though the wizard is in theory the more powerful their fate in a 1vs1 hangs very much on only one or two die roll - a saving throw passed by the opponent or spell attack roll missed matters so much for them, as its an entire turn mostly wasted. But on the flip side they probably do better vastly outnumbered as long as they don't get caught, as all the barbarian has is the bloody minded refusal to say 'ouch'...
Fantastic series!
At the beginning I was surprised to see so many of my favorites ranked so low. But I think I now realize that most of the fun of optimizing for me involves the challenge of taking a weak subclass and making it effective. So, now this series has given me a great list of challenges for my next few characters.
Thanks for all of this!
Honestly, this series was great as a DM for a party of non optimizers. Helped me realize the weaknesses of base class, so it could help me balance the party by giving our magic items or new learned techniques. Helps give some of the more stagnant classes more variety.
I’ve seen so many of these tier lists from other TH-camrs. Yours are the only ones I’ve seen where it’s actually an objective look and not based off of public opinion or bias. Some of them are so basic they’re just based off general polls!
I think the biggest issue came from people misinterpreting your ranks. It probably was a mistake to use the standard S-F scale, since people have preconcieved notions about what that is, and in the US there is an automatic association with classroom grades. It's hard to see something get a "D" ranking and equate that to "serviceable" when in most other settings a "D" is not an acceptable grade. If they just look at the final chart, they don't catch on that you are ranking based on how much effort is required to optimize the class.
This came up hard on the Rogues, where much of their value comes from non-quantifiable play out of combat and strategies that strongly rely on team coordination. If your team can't really capitalize on either advantage, you're going to have a hard time. Whereas the vast majority of Fighters don't care how random the team is and slot into teams without risk or conditionals.
Yeah. I also think this is how i'd look at this in the future when selecting what I wanna play.
so if the rest of my party is picking C-D tiers, I'd do the same. Its only the internal party balance that really matters.
I would agree. instead of "S, A, B, C, D, E, F" I think it should have been "Broken, S, A, B, C, D, Unserviceable". That would have been a lot clearer I think.
@@Vidiri I've never understood why there needs to be an "S" ranking above "A". Why not just make "A" the best?
I have a spreadsheet for ranking stats in a different game and the wiki uses the SABCDF scale. I have to make a custom sort setting just to keep the S at the top of the list.
@@DougAdams You said it yourself.
>It's hard to see something get a "D" ranking and equate that to "serviceable" when in most other settings a "D" is not an acceptable grade.
So if you want there to be four acceptable grades, and 'acceptable' starts at C, there has to be something above A.
Of course, it's pretty arbitrary and you could easily have three acceptable grades instead, but Treantmonk must have believed four were needed (not including S).
First of all, lovely series! Glad you mentioned Armorer at the end. That was really the only subclass I took major umbrage with your ranking. But as you said, this is YOUR ranking, and a good one at that.
would be cool to see races power level next(and maybe a small series ranking the bg features)
Yes!!! Don't think I have ever seen one.
Best series on TH-cam.
Variant human at the top?
That would be an interesting list post-Tasha’s
Probably the variant race from Tasha's, then variant human, then a bunch of ties, especially since you can move the bonuses around now. Most people tend to like a +2 over two +1s, and the option to take darkvision or not is a huge boon as well.
Honestly an amazing series. I was looking forward to every single video and watched all of them. You helped me get away from a "but X class has a great ability starting at level 17" mindset because as you rightfully said many times: most games don't run for that long.
It would however be really interesting to see an updated list of classes potential starting level 11 and up, just to see the difference it would make on the list.
Thanks for this amazing series!
One aspect of your deep analysis ranking that is interesting is that the Warlock in ranked 7th out of 13 classes ... right in the middle. Making it a great candidate to use to establish a baseline damage scale when comparing other builds. (Which, of course, is what you do, and have always done ... it's just cool to see the output of this analysis bolstering that approach).
At first i would've put the artificer class at around A-tier, but your arguments somewhat convinced me that it should be lower. Although, I still disagree to the full extent. Among the 3 half-casters, artificer has some of the best spells, like web, faerie fire, haste and other really decent ones through subclasses. Things that can give you advantage on martial attacks, i.e. web, ff are exactly what you want in a martial half-caster, and not only that, level 10 spell-storing item allows you to cast those spells through a pet or a tiny servant without impact to action economy. Also the class is completely SAD by itself unlike pal and ranger. Infusions will always have a good use even with magic items in the game; if a magic item slot is already taken, make a different one. Unless everyone in the party is already attuned to 3 magic items, which lets be honest never happens. Just give +1-2 to a spellcaster in the party.
- Level 11 (not 10) spell-storing item is a bit late, even if it's a good ability that helps the casting capacity of the class. It was probably given less importance because of how late you gain the ability.
- Artificers are not good damage dealer in comparison to paladins or, to a certain extent, rangers. Only Armorer and Battlesmith gain extra attack.
I think the base class end up really close to the Tasha's ranger. I would give them a higher rating then what Treanmonk gave, but not by much.
TM said that the rating is mostly baised on how easy it is to optimize the class/subclass. There are so many trap options thorough the class that it is easy for beginners to make bad choices that will make playing the class not fun. Also, the Artificer class is harder to optimize for damage than a ranger or a paladin. I DMed 4 games with an Artificer PC, only 1 player felt like he was helping the group in a meaningfull way.
ps: Alchemist is abysmal.
nahhh wayyyy.... i've played the Shepherd Druid and now the Artillerist and my Shepherd would dunk your (and my) Artillerist so hard back down the tier list you'll complain about imbalance. There is way too much optimization needed for the Artillerist and then with all that stuff it became super clunky to play and not much fun. If it got the 2nd attack it should have had the ability to shoot its cantrip TWICE, and all the dice that make up it's optimized attacks i wished were the same dice so turns could be quicker (cantrip d10, extra damage d8?, familiar wand d6's??). It was stupid. Compare that to telling every one i healed them a decent chunk while summoned creatures beat up the enemy artillerists. Shepherd is a one man army. Artillerist doesn't even do what it says it is! A commoner with a longbow delivers the same number of attacks at longer range. They missed the chance to have a character that had a scaling fireball, thus literally laying down some kind of artillery (imo).
What ended up happening is i just told my extremely helpful DM that i wanted to homebrew my Artillerist into quick, bang bang, turn done, average hero. I grouped those dice, straight up gave myself a second cantrip attack, and some other fixes. I was also in a party with some random stuff but i'm experienced so i'm telling the long story short. It's fixable, but too clunky in its current form. And it's hard for people to keep track temp hp every round and magic items that aren't life and death important. Players generally wanna keep track of fewer things and not be prompted to adjust temp hp that often, not remember to count charges on your moderately helpful, magic wands and so on. People will take the flying boots tho, that's good. But hey i think i made my point, simpler is best. Quick turns are best. Good design is hard and Artificer has always been hard to design, so i'm not dumping on the effort and the fact we have one finally.
Nah, he’s right. It’s got a slightly better spell list than other half casters, but it’s got poor hit points and vastly inferior weapon capabilities versus them for minimal compensation.
im currently playing a campaign with an alchemist - loving the flavor and the charater but it honestly feels horribly underpowered in almost every respect - even more than i thought it might when i looked at the class initially. At lower levels (pre lvl 10) its pretty dire, Im fairly certain the only reason my character has even managed to survive is that ive optimised him as much as physically possible and am a relatively experienced player, which is a shame as its such a cool idea for a class/subclass but yeah, sadly I agree with Treantmonk, its basically unplayable and I definitely wouldnt reccommend alchemist or even artificier to a new player.
Basically clerics and warlocks are better for 1~2 lvl dips than full classes.
Also wizards, sorcs and bards only get going after level 5, and yeah 5 to 12 is the sweet spot in dnd. But imo the paladin is the most constant class in the game. The cleric starts strong but his last great spell is spirit guardians at 5.
(Still bards and wizards are great and I don't disagree with the rankings)
I feel like the reason rogue is so low is that there are a few really good rogue classes, especially with a slight multi class like arcane trickster, but there are a lot of rogue sub classes that are very unimpressive and you rarely if ever see those classes played.
Also because DPR accounts for 98% of all consideration for this series
I have to agree. I'm having tons of fun with my Inquisitor Rogue, but I've realized that since Aim made Insightful Fighting obsolete I've never used any of my subclass features. They sounded cool, but I've never really been in a situation where they made any difference. I'm just using the Rogue base Features and nothing from the subclass.
It's funny to see Assassin so low and Gloomstalker so high considering how synergistic they are with each other. Thanks for the series. It was great to watch as my party and I come into 5e again to test things out with the newer books.
thank you! I have referred lots of my friends to this series, and we agree with most! thanks for your time and I look forward to everything else you put out.
Finally here! I feel like we all just graduated together, Treantmonk Temple's class of 2021. I'd like to shake all your hands.
I expected wizard 1 and was wondering if it was bard or paladin on 2.
The paladin deserves 2 in the end, because there is no way to screw up a paladin character. Lay on hands is a solidly scaling healing option, it's almost like a fighter in terms of damage output (smite vs action surge), and I feel like buffing concentration spells are a great way to boost the party without requiring high level spells. At this point paladins are already pretty solid, and then they give the saving throw boost. And this isn't even accounting for their subclasses. It does everything but range and rituals.
Btw now that I think about it paladin-wizard-bard might even make the strongest 3 man team. It has a really good team dynamic where a paladin rushes in trying to maximise damage and be a physical obstacle between him and the rest, the bard supports him directly with buffs/debuffs/healing and the wizard throws around encounter ending spells.
In terms of utility there is strongman paladin for physical assignments, silver tongued bard to talk through everything and clever wizard to conjure solutions.
The only thing not present is stealth, so it might be an idea to get the bard to invest 1 of the expertises into that.
Pass without trace is a great spell for a situation like this. +10 is a huge bonus
@@claytongrey988 yup, bard taking Pass Without Trace as a magical secret does most of the work to address the stealth issues. Alternatively, an invisible familiar can scout in a pinch.
If a Wizard and a Bard can't figure out how to stealth with spells, do they really deserve those classes?
Upcast Invisibility+Pass Without Trace, problem solved.
@@LarsaXL Where do I start with the problem of your comment.
All 3 of these spells have verbal components, which inherently doesn't combine with stealth (also a problem with the rogue, but I was thinking about taking the metamagic feat).
Per RAW, verbal components have to be spoken at an audible level, which undoes even the opportunity of rolling a stealth roll.
Furthermore, invisibility stops as soon as a spell is cast and pass without trace is neither on the bard spell list nor the wizard one, meaning the bard needs to be level 10+ to inefficiently perform your suggested heist.
So all in all, you require a level 5 wizard for upcasted invisibility, a level 10 bard for pass without trace, as soon as the (presumably) wizard takes misty step all stealth, as well as invisibility ends, alerting anyone within ~60ft.
Dude this is flat out worse then just a plain sorcerer 3 with subtle spell.
You might skip components etc., thereby massively buffing casters in your own game, but bards and wizards just aren't supposed to stealth cast their magic without feat investment.
Ignoring V, S, M is a big part in why casting is considered op in 5e, and you show your lack of awareness of this very thing with your comment.
@@Olav_Hansen since both of those are long duration buffs, the idea is to cast them before trying to sneak into somewhere, not after you're already in the middle of the enemy barracks. And I don't know why you are bringing up misty step, any character could do something to break invisibility and stealth anyway, the whole party needs to not do those things if they want to be stealthy.
The bard could also opt for something like silence at lower levels to help with any stealth efforts.
Excluding exceptional subclasses, my thoughts on where the classes would end up were:
Tier 1: wizard>paladin
Tier 2: cleric>bard>druid
Tier 3: warlock>ranger>sorcerer>artificer
Tier 4: fighter>rogue>barbarian
Tier 5: monk
I disagree and I would put sorcerer above ranger, but I totally understand your placement
Not too far off from Chris' (9:05):
C - Bard, Paladin, Wizard
D - Druid, Cleric, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock
E - Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue
F - Artificer, Monk
@@zhangbill1194 I'm including Aberrant and Clockwork as "exceptional subclasses", base sorcerer is the least versatile of all the full casters with their tiny spells known unless you **really** know what you're doing with character building. With standard ranger design being an extra 10, albeit situational, spells too, they are not **that** much less versatile as a half-caster, while their other "half" is a whole-ass Archery SS multi-attacking fighter
I've been more introverted lately, and I've not left as many comments, but I wanted to say congratulations! This has been a great series, and it feels like a great capstone to 5e rankings as 5.5 is being discussed.
Thank you for the hours of amazing content. :)
Thanks for the recap! Your overview of the subclass meta has greatly increased my ability to articulate the comparisons you made throughout the series. I will experiment more having seen some of the interesting possibilities you mentioned!
I still think the seven ability score increases a fighter gets should give it a boost AT LEAST over ranking E. That will only get better as more and better feats are published. Though I get that multi classing puts a monkey wrench into that.
BTW: Loved this series! I’m brand new to D&D with only two sessions under my belt, and your channel has really helped me hit the ground running. Looking forward to the many wizard characters I have in mind now.
More and more feats wont be published. Seems like now they want to release a new system, or more like update 5th edition to 5.5e
Between the extra ASIs, Action Surge, and the extra Extra Attacks Fighters are way more than the memes would make you believe.
Nope. There is a strong anti-martial bias around these parts
He graded everything based on levels 1-10 pretty much, so he didn't really bother considering what comes after tier 2.
@@GuyFawkes051 after tier 2 full casters get 6th level spells
What a journey! You have my favorite of these type of series. In-depth assessments and quality observations, from both your channel and the comments section. Thank you, it helps make my experience of my favorite game that much better
This was the best series you've done, Chris. Truly exceptional work.
Wow, thanks!
Good series. Something to acknowledge is that overall power of clases based on optimization is not equal to real effectiveness at the table. Player's experience, group's play style and actual levels played influence a lot more. In a tier 1, rookies players table, probably would see rogues and barbarians outshine other clases (except crazy good Moon Druid) until full casters grab 3rd level spells, and even at that point a poor spell selection would hinder the caster character far more than any build decision a martial could make. Optimization is a good metric as long as we asume some expertise from the players and a typical campaign.
Im really excited to see this return for One DnD!
I wouldnt mind yearly updates with the new subclasses and changes in opinions. Great series that has taught me a lot both the classes that I play and the ones that I don't. Have a good day!
Will you continue to update this complete ranking as more official subclasses are released?
I assume you’ll cover the draconic subclasses. I’d like to see where you’d place them relative to everything else.
So happy you ended up doing this video Chris. Your insights into the game are great. I'm thinking about a feature focused method of character creation buying them with points. To give more options for the players to customize the characters. Loved your variant. Cheers
Really brilliant what you did here, you have given the most comprehensive and I would say, accurate, ranking of subclasses for fifth edition. Happy to see so many wizard subclasses ranked A tier given how good it is as a class. Your guide to the god wizard was what got me into the class and playing a wizard in my current campaign. 10/10
Thank you very much Chris. I really appreciate the enormous amount of time and thought given to this series. I enjoyed all the series and liked that you focused on the lower tiers of play.
I've been playing on and off for over 20 years and I can't think of a single long running campaign where any characters got above 15th level, so keeping the analysis to abilities gained early really pushed the point of just how front loaded a lot of the classes are.
Awesome, Chris-you are the best
In future would love to see you create/rank some multiclassed characters
I love how engaged you are with your community. I’ll definitely keep an eye on this channel. Great content.
It's been fun following the tier lists, and very refreshing to see your opinion being so different from the established norms but also motivated by good analysis.
Glad you enjoyed!
Thank you Chris no only for this series but all of the dnd content of yours that I have consumed and learned from.
It's been a wild ride, thanks for this series Chris
I think the ancestral guardian barbarian might actually be the strongest barbarian. Not because it deals a lot of damage, because it’s limited in that capacity.
But the fact that it’s ability basically gives the rest of the party totem barbarian resistance AND disadvantage vs those attacks. It makes the entire party tankier than you, the barbarian.
Reach/thrown/ranged weapon ancestral guardians is amazing. The feature doesn’t require any particular type of attack or weapon. Hell, an artificer that gives you a spell storing item with Scorching Ray can be used since that’s not actually casting a spell while raging.
Fantastic series. Thank you for being so detailed, and also transparent.
As a follow-up series, I think it would be great to use this ranking (including the system of ranking, itself) to show the group dynamics that make these classes so good, mediocre, or bad.
I think white room comparisons make it hard to visualize the various tradeoffs you discuss. In a couple of your build videos (Echo Knight springs to mind) you use a vtt to illustrate your discussion, and I think it made complex interactions much clearer.
Thanks again for the high grade presentations and discussions you bring us.
The Artificer of this edition is the same to me as the bard in 3.5/PF games. It has some neat tricks, some cool flavor, you can still make a fun character out of it. But it is just worst then a lot of other classes out there. And the fix that was rightly identified for it in 5e was just to make it a full caster. Suddenly with that they actually become pretty good.
I'm curious to see what a full caster Artificer would look like. Would you just give them a primary spell progression or change more? Nerf something to balance it out?
@@LarsaXL restricted spelllist I guess
Congrats on finishing this series! That was an impressive undertaking!
Thank you so much for this series! Amazing in depth analysis, help me a lot with seeing potential in classes I had written off without really looking at them!
I really appreciate this ranking. I always respect your opinion as a lot of the time your thoughts either; A. Reflect my own or B. Provide insight that I may never have thought of.
Thank you for your quality of work and really being one of those that set the standard for the enjoyment and sportsmanship in this hobby.
TLDR- nice listing and not any surprise.
When it is a power ranking this makes a lot of sense. Rogues are skill based. And that support classes that are not the bard are where I expect. It is clear that WotC wanted to increase the power of the clerics as a result you see them as broken. My idea I love to see someone do is the same thing for the other to Pilars of the game and support - the non- power rankings.
Thanks for doing the whole series and this summary video.
I will be honest, have not watched them all but the ones that I did gave me good insights.
As I commented on another one, I like it that you mainly look at facts and function (and with that take off my rosey rule of cool glasses).
Not always agreeing with everything, but (and it pains me as a cleric lover) I completely agree that you say their spell list is holding them back.
The more I dived into the class the more I started to feel that way, and you voicing it here has confirmed that.
Anyway, please keep doing the great informative videos.
I'm glad you talked about Clerics being "full spellcasters." Recently I've been looking at how iffy melee cleric builds are (compared to instead choosing fighters or paladins or the like, with the appropriate feats and particular racial features) and the automatic defense of "but at the end of the day, you're still a full spellcaster" just didn't hold up - I looked through the spell list Clerics have, and there's a lot of fluff and healing that doesn't come close to the "full spellcasting" ideal. To my current understanding, it's most importantly the Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, and Dodge approach that Cleric wants to get, with the options for some combat-healing like (Mass) Healing Word or Mass Heal and some Bless-type support (usually for weaker combats where you don't want to risk much party damage) and then out-of-combat healing like Aura of Vitality and Healing Spirit. It's not the reality-warping impact that "full spellcaster" implies, just....pretty solid, economic options for crowd damage - a bread-and-butter combat fixture, not the power of a perfect control caster. I love playing Cleric and I do think it's a very strong class, but I feel like people assume there's a lot that they don't know about which must be hidden deep in the spell list when they talk about Cleric, and it's just not there.
I would largely agree, and I think even some of the Cleric spells that get highly praised are not looked at more critically in a practical setting.
If you use both Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon, one of them is losing a turn of combat up front since it won't come out until turn 2. On top of that, sure Spiritual Weapon doesn't require concentration because it would simply be awful if it did. It's only useful in tight spaces where its very limited movement speed isn't a problem. I've seen a ton of times where another party member kills the enemy that a SW is next to and then on the Cleric's next turn he can only move it some of the way to another enemy but not close enough to attack. This is only more common in fights with weaker enemies where having many relatively small hits should be at its best opportunity to shine. That doesn't even take into account how many turns from it are lost due to needing to Healing Word, Mass Healing Word, or Sanctuary someone. All of these losses in attacks occur frequently and if you only end up getting 2-3 swings out of it in a 4-6 round encounter, it simply wasn't worth it.
Then consider Bless. As you said, people want to use Bless in encounters with weaker enemies because it's a low level spell, but the problem is that Bless is a terrible bonus when you're fighting weak enemies. Bless has very little impact on these fights and is instead at its strongest when fighting very difficult enemies. For one, harder enemies are simply more likely to require saving throws. Secondly, Bless gets better the higher the enemy's AC is. If you already have a 65% chance to hit something, increasing that to 72.5% means you're only going to average 11.5% more hits. In that case, Bless will only add, on average, a single hit roughly every 10 attacks. That's a lot of rounds of Bless doing nothing. However, if you only have a 20% chance to hit something with a high AC, increasing that to 32.5% is a massive swing in combat capability. That's a 62.5% increase in the numbers of hits you're going to land on average. Those same 10 attacks will instead get roughly 6 more hits solely from the benefit of Bless compared to the 1 from the weaker enemy scenario. However, even with all of this, it's still just Bless and using concentration. There are higher level spells that have more direct impact on the battle that you probably want to be concentrating on instead. I really think Bless should lose its concentration requirement when up-cast to a certain level, but that's just me.
@@tarrickmerdev2324 This is a very useful reflection on these spells. What you say about Spiritual Weapon rings exactly true in my experience, for what it's worth - enemies I'm hitting with it oftentimes get zapped by the Rogue, for example, and then I have to hope that 20ft will be enough to get to the next one. Your point about Bless is also well-taken, considering the weak fights are reliably over and done with very quickly. It feels like Spirit Guardians is basically a class feature of Cleric.
This was a great series and really enjoy the rational behind this ranking. I do have to say that I'm a little surprised with the Lore Bard being behind all but 2 wizards sub classes. Sure, it doesn't have the amount of options a wizards has and can't recover spell slots, but the Bard's spell list is so versatile (and has healing, which it isn't on the Wizards' spell list ), especially with Tasha's additional spells, more so with the Lore Bard being able to grab any spell that they don't have access to at 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th. They are the best at countering spells (by taking counterspell at 6th) and cutting words works a little bit like a counter-attack. Then they are also the most skilled sub-classes (most skills + expertise), gets a boost to initiative (Jack of all trade),a little better HD, and armor and weapon prof, which prevents the "Mage Armor" tax...So I feel like Conjuration, Necromancy and Transmutation don't offer much compared to the Lore Bard potential.
Arcane Archer with Grasping Shot and any method to force movement is great. The Telekinesis (feat) comes to mind but Genie Warlock dip or Swarm Ranger dip... or even taking some maneuvers via feats (you can get two dice this way) are also possible.
The damage is triggered each turn the enemy is moved, so your party can also get in on it. There are so many forced movement options now this is really easy to optimize around as a party.
It doesn't scale until 18, but right away at level 3 we can add 4d6 damage on our first turn + probably 2d6 on the enemies turn if it tries to move back. And then another 2d6 on each of our turns and the enemies turns after. That's really great for level 3.
I also love that the Piercing Shot adds damage from the arrow to multiple enemies. With magic bows and magic arrows that provide a boost to damage, we can be potentially adding a decent bonus to this line attack on multiple enemies. In our game, +2 arrows are pretty easy to purchase because they're consumable. I buy those up and then use them with my +1 bow and then use them when I can line up 3-4 tougher enemies.
Really was a great series looking forward to your next one.
While being able to cover a wide range of abilities is great specialization is why you have a party. Sure clerics aren’t going to be able to deal crazy damage or teleport but that’s not their job. Yeah the cleric only has a hammer but the wizard has a wrench and the fighter a screw driver.
Thank you for putting in all the effort and being so open and transparent with your thoughts.
Such an enjoyable series! You provided deep analysis and some really great insight based on experience. I don't play very often, but I think meta gaming is a lot of fun and every point in the videos was backed up with solid data. Not much more to ask.
Thank you for making this, and especially for weighting it strongly toward the levels people actually plays.
I've been playing for years and in my experience, pretty much everything is played at levels 3-11 with the last couple sessions of a long campaign reaching as high as 13-14. And some start at 1 only to rush the first couple levels.
I really enjoyed the series, the simple fact that you gave higher value to the lower level abilities and flat out ignored the high level/capstones was such a good idea. I see way too many people talk about capstones or really high level abilities to justify how good or bad a class/subclass is when in realty practically nobody will ever play it at that level. Taking a very practical, consistent approach was the best way to do this, so well done!
Excited to see what you do next! I really enjoyed watching this series and I looked forward to each episode every week!
this video series was great, and super educational. Thank you for doing such a deep dive on all the classes and subclasses, this will be a great resource for future character building!
You're so welcome!
I don't see Pipes of Haunting as that narrow in purpose (or mind sharpener).
3 uses a day. No friendly fire. Massive AoE. Great effect. No concentration. It's just really, really good.
Overall though, I don't think you're far off where I did disagree and I LOVED the series and appreciate you making it. If I think back to other TH-camr tier lists, this one feels to me like the best. It teaches you to analyze abilities too, instead of just take your first reaction, which I love.
Thank you for putting the work into this
The biggest issue I have with Monks as a DM is they are as disruptive as the Problematic Subclasses to my campaigns but in a different way to those subclasses. The two biggest things being: how often Long/Short rests can happen, and not only how often I can put in encounters but also the entire way I can design encounters in general to make the Monk player feel useful and not overshadowed.
My group is very Roleplay Heavy (like, Critical Role levels of RP Heavy) so I tend to have Long and Short rests happen when it would make narrative sense to do so (which solves the "Resting in a Dungeon" issue because my group realises how little sense it actually makes from a Roleplay point of view).
Having someone play a Monk means I really have to start giving more chances at a Long or Short rest, even during parts of the campaign where it's supposed to be a marathon for the characters, maybe they're trekking through some gruelling terrain to beat the BBEG to thier destination and can't rest. Maybe they are on the run and need to keep moving. Maybe my players wanted a more gritty survival heavy campaign with fewer chances to rest. Monks needing more frequent rests throws a huge spanner in the works.
I'm not saying I never want people to play it, but I need to redo a lot in a campaign and try to have it so there's a Long/Short rest every 1-2 encounters, smiliar to in Critical Role, and I also have to work in more monsters that aren't just going to pass every CON save, or having more encounters with one bit monster so the Monk gets to feel strong by getting to pull out Stunning Fist at an important time, and not have to worry about the fact they had to dump all of thier Ki Points to do that. The problem with this is pretty obvious when you also have players with Paladins, Fighters and Warlocks who can dump disgusting amounts of DPR into one single entity. So I end up having to inflate thier HP so the rest of the party goesn't get bored of One Rounding an encouter that should be the epic end to a Narrative Arc for the party for the nth time while also making sure I don't use things with too high a CON Save so the Monk still feels like they are doing something useful and not make it look like I'm fudging saves to make them feel useful.
Without a Monk I can actually get far more creative and varied with the sorts of combat encounters, roleplay and survival situations I can put my players into. It's a shame really because I do love the class thematically and the subclasses ooze flavour and I hate discouraging people from taking something they really like, but honestly as a DM I find them just as disruptive as a Problematic Subclass, hialriously for similar reasons.
This has been both a very enjoyable and thought provoking series, thanks for the hard work on it Chris!
Hi. Thanks for the work you put in. This series was very enjoyable and informative. I now refer it to my new players. Keep up the great content Chris.
OMG just found this after years of using your PDFs to help build my characters. Big thanks man.
One thing about this chart is that you have to assume the player has a decent amount of game knowledge for it to hold true.
Our CoS game has a twilight cleric and they are far from broken mainly due to the player playing extremely suboptimally. (He thinks turn undead is better then twilight sanctuary and preps bad spells). The subclass keeps him from being useless but our druid and sorlock who are run by optimizers are far more potent simply due to the players being more knowledgeable.
On some tables power attack is power gaming.
Thank you for such an indepth long running series. Awesome work and I hope your next few topics give you a chance to relax a bit xD
Was a great series. Definitely had me pondering some of my bias when ranking. And really makes me want to play a wizard again LOL
Biggest change I would make is bump Bladesinger over Enchantment. A lot of groups/DMs have ways of generating stats that are higher or much higher than point buy; the bladsinger I think the most of any subclass benefits from this (and monks). Most groups do not have very many challenging battles per long rest so you have enough bladesongs. Bladesinger can multiclass really well with 2 levels of paladin. Doing the math it's easily superior to any hexblade/eldritch smite build. Without multiclassing it can be better than most martials at almost everything, delivering more damage in more versatile ways and having higher AC, plus shield/absorb elements ect. Large temporary hit point boosts or great ways to heal allies during combat from party members are very common now which greatly mitigates their one weakness. On top of being a superior martial they can be a superior full spell caster whenever they want. Versatility is commonly underrated in game mechanics analysis in general. Things like adventurer's league, or groups in flux are common these days for DnD players, the game is designed such that having a healthy of mix of martials/casters or party rolls is crucial to good party dynamics and success. Having the ability to be a great marital or great full caster from one battle to another, or turn for that matter, is phenomenal, no other subclass can do it nearly as well.
I personally agree with your analysis of the subclasses, and can see your rankings making sense based on your own explicitly stated criteria. My *personal and subjective* opinion is different with the rogue and the bard, for example, because I rank skill checks higher than saving throws, just because in the games I've played they are more common out of combat, which is most of my play time. I just have more fun in story, RP and exploration, than in combat.
I also rank combat versatility higher than combat damage, too. Like, I prefer to have more options for different situations with my bonus action and action, than being able to go nova or high DPR.
But that is just me and I completely agree with your assessment, based on your own preferences. Your series of videos ranking subclasses is amazing. Thanks for doing all this work and sharing!
I think one of the problems the rogue ran into was exactly that. So much of the power distribution was spent on skills and combat evasion, just to make the rogue function in its power fantasy. I feel the devs mistook that to mean rogues were particularly powerful, and their subclasses suffered for it.
@@greycat5383 You know, that makes a lot of sense. That argument could even apply to other classes, I guess.
One thing I appreciated about your breakdown was that it's given me an idea of what the heroes and villains should be classified as.
First thank you for taking the time to put this all together, You are very upfront about your biases and your rankings following your line of thinking, thank you for all the insights into how you have come to your P.O.V.
Two things, the Paladin's Aura of Protection I view more as a walking target than a strong feature. Too many times a clump of PCs becomes the target of an AOE that, despite the boon, creates too much loss of resources for that side of the conflict.
Second thing, I think I figured out why I love the rogue's no limited resources so much. As a person I struggle with resource management decisions. "Is this the time I need to lay down the big boom, or do I need to save that for the next epic battle I may face that day?" With the rogue I don't have any of that, I just need to set up my sneak attack and hope for a good roll to do what I consider noteworthy damage.
Thank you for these. I really enjoyed this series and am looking forward to your new content.
I would say that I can see the clear difference between Spell caster and Martial classes in two different major ranks. I would agree that spell casters do have an advantage over martial, but martial also have an advantage role is to be a heavy hitter, damage dealer. Which on its own will be lesser compare to spell casting but on a team will be an as essential importance. Which actually makes the lower end of spell casters actually being worse received than the higher end of the maritals. For example, I think fighter on it's own is probably weaker than a cleric but probably stronger in team because fighter is in higher rank among damage dealers and cleric is among lower end of spell casters. I think it would be better to divide different major rolls to set ranks(while a character can perform multiple rolls, like paladin is both a good damage dealer and team support(the damn good aura)). This will show a more clear image of which subclass would be stronger.
Quite massive analysis. Cheers for it! Helps dm's and players to compare power levels between classes & subclasses.
TMT, your list is as close to accurate as the community is likely to find. Well done and I look forward to your future works.
As well, I've made comments in your previous videos that are almost all addressed within this video. Which shows you are paying attention to the criticisms and are incorporating them into your analysis. This is a mark of a balanced thinker and I commend you further for this. It's a good quality and it is not going unnoticed...
One thing I might add though is that while you do give AC its due by exalting the Valor Bard, the inverse doesn't seem to be acknowledged with the relative weakness of the Wizard and Sorcerer. This, I think, is the incongruency in the evaluation among at least the full casters. Yes, the Cleric has a limited 'real' spell selection, but what is the advantage of armor and more spells known versus less actual spells known and no armor for the Sorcerer? What is the downside to the Wizard against all other full casters for said same? This I think is not properly accounted for.
To be sure, there is an assumption that a Wizard or Sorcerer being protected by his group while in the back line is still equal footing... When it is not. We should take this into account, no?
I'd love to see your opinion on how to fix/tweak the F, E and S ranks (aside from monk, obviously)
Also, Blood Hunter ranks/fixes - but I guess you already mentioned it on the earlier videos that you were not doing it
Would have loved to seen Blood Hunter ranks but that might be gluttonous on my part.
Lol even in the hopeful comments Monk gets no love
@@jeepersmcgee3466 that's because treantmonk have already done it :
th-cam.com/video/ojtmhUmGNco/w-d-xo.html
This was very insightful. I made like a homebrew 5.1 edition change of every class and subclass to make them all fall within the A-C range. Practically everything I nerfed was in your S rank, and buffed almost everything of D-E-F. So it was nice to see your view on the power of the (sub)classes and see it backed up by this data. The only thing we disagree on is the Hunter and the Swashbuckler. I have the hunter in C tier and the Swashbuckler in B tier.
I just don't understand why Artificer would be ranked so low.
While they're half casters, they get spellcasting from first level, and you round up for spell slots when multiclassing rather than round down like the Paladin and Ranger. Multiclassing with a dip into Wizard or Fighter for this class is just so much fun.
They have proficiency with shields, medium armor and for Constitution saves from the start.
Like Clerics and Druids, they have access to Guidance, which means they can add 1d4 to almost every Initiative roll or ability/tool check that may come up. Perfect with Thieves' Tool proficiency or any knowledge check.
By RAW, they can get access to any Level 1 spell in the game with Replicate Magic Item - Spellwrought Tattoo. Sure, you can only cast it once and need a long rest to reapply another tattoo, but this means you can never starve thanks to Goodberry, and you have access to at least one cast per day of either Find Familiar, Shield, Zephyr Strike, Bless, Hex or Shield of Faith. And familiars don't disappear or have a time limit. This perk alone is incredible.
Magical Tinkering is often viewed as a lesser version of Prestidigitation or Thaumaturgy, but its effects are permanent and could be used to create permanent light sources that work underwater, rags that smell good and help protect against the Stench ability of monsters such as Troglodytes, smelling salts to awaken unconscious characters, and more.
The way spellcasting works for the class, every single Artificer spell has an "M" component when you cast it, meaning you can ignore all "S" components, since a spellcaster can use the same hand to hold a spellcasting focus for material components and perform somatic components. Select the Calligrapher's Supplies as one of your tool proficiencies and either purchase a Signet Ring for signing documents or obtain one from the Noble background, and you can probably use the ring as your spell casting focus, letting you hold a weapon. Wear an ink bottle as a pendant, or hide an ink pen in your shoe and you'll always have a spellcasting focus on you if you get captured.
It's one of the classes that starts at Level 1 with the highest amount of gold (for the class's starting equipment, you can select three Light Crossbows and sell all three).
The Telekinetic, Fey-Touched, Shadow-Touched and Aberrant Dragonmark feats are so good for this class if you have access to them, bumping up your Int or Con to 18 or 16 while grabbing some very useful spells. If the Optional Rule: Firearm Proficiency feature is allowed, that also means the class qualifies for the requirements of the Fighting Initiate feat, in case you'd rather increase your AC, gain Blindsight, or increase your damage.
I'm seeing a lot of good stuff here.
Artificer is a half-caster with mechanics of full-caster. They are worse warlocks. Two of the four subclasses have to rely on cantrips (!) to deal damage, and they aren't good enough in it. Armorer has very limited damage and its other bonuses aren't strong enough to make up for that, and Battlesmith is the decent one but nothing more, a C tier by Treantmonk standards.
About Artificer's core features... they are almost pure utility, and utility is very hard to value properly. Infusions are just magic items, which some tables would have no shortage of, and other features are quite minor until you get Spell-Storing Item that comes relatively late.
Spellwrought Tattoo thing is something I believe is just an oversight from developers and shouldn't be considered as a proper strength - the feature specifically forbids creating Spell Scrolls, and Spellwrought Tattoo is basically the same thing but named differently.
Not saying that Artificers are weak - I agree that Treantmonk undervalued them a bit, but I can see his reasoning. Plus, in the end, they didn't end up *that* bad, 10th out of 13th place. Fighter and Ranger are pretty fair competition for them, they just do things that Treantmonk prefers better, but I could see those three being switched around.
It's been a YEAR!? I still reference these lists and listen to the critiques.
I played so much dnd since then...
It's been a good year...
Chris thanks so much for your work. Just like your other Guides before this changes how I view the game and mechanics. It's an invaluable to tool that I've already benefited from when i created my current Gloomstalker. I like the insider knowledge and your insight has already made my games better!!
It would be fun to create a multiclass video based on this ranking. Example take 2 B rank subclasses and see if they outperform a A or S rank. Even more if the are from a lower ranking.
Wow that's an awesome idea
It would be fantastic!
The one thing I want you to think about when ranking this class and subclasses. A lot of games will roll there stats instead of the standard array, some subclass can do lot better then othere with those good 4d6 rolls where some class just do terrible with bad 4d6 rolls. You should do a video rating class with how stat playing style and do one with ranking if you have generous DM or good dice roll.
Portent is the most potent feature in the game. I've been banned from playing divination wizards by three different groups. :)
Enjoyed the series :) Thanks for the huge amount of work put into it!
Great job, love watching and learning from your videos.
Really enjoyed this series and the thought you put into your system and rankings. I would love to see a build featuring armorer, because I love the flavor. You seem intrigued by it as well and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to optimize it.
I second this!! I want to see the armorer special !!!
I appreciate this list and all the work you put in it. Very well made and designed. Most rankings I agree with or have my own biases I admit to. I’d rank artificer higher, but the games I’m involved with usually rarely have many magic items and at least half are not useful or niche utility items. Like a magical luggage set. My last campaign ended with more than one person having a weapon of more than +1. Which is the only time it happened, same for armor. So being able to infuse items and make what we want using said infusions is really useful. It is definitely a class designed around its subclasses so I agree that a bare bones artificer wouldn’t be real great.
Again! Thanks for everything, you’re awesome and have given me things to think about.
It kinda cracks me up that cleric had TWO S-ranks and STILL slipped 3 ranks down. Downside of having so many subclasses total, I guess.
HAH! I see you have finally come around to putting the druid where it belongs! Above the puny cleric! MUAHAHA!
Awesome series, glad you did this recap it was super interesting. I thought cleric or bard would be second best, but this all makes sense. I'm glad that druids got the love they deserve, I think they are severely underrated (aside from people playing moon druid).
It's been a great ride so far! Always appreciate your content. One takeaway I had from this series: Swordcoast Adventurer's guide has shitty subclasses.
Yeah, such a bunch of junk in that book.
Somehow this list hasn’t deterred me from playing Monks.
I just want to say I am really impressed with this and thank you! Just to share with you where my ranks are even though I haven't done as much research but they were similar. The biggest discrepancies were Paladin, Cleric and Artificer.
1. Cleric 2. Druid 3. Bard 4. Wizard 5. Sorcerer 6. Warlock 7. Artificer 8. Paladin 9. Ranger 10. Fighter 11. Rogue 12. Barbarian 13. Monk
My biases are I like versatility, I have played more at low levels (at higher levels I'm sure the wizard would be higher), I rarely receive magic items from my DM and when I do they aren't typically ones I want, I have a hard time justifying a non caster above a half caster and a half caster above a full caster. I have played with DM's who make long rests difficult to come by. My issue with Paladin is it feels like they could blow all their resources in 2 rounds and then they arent any good after that. But to be fair I cant think of a class I would rather have in a high level boss fight that was fully rested than a Paladin.
I definitely see the ranger tied or above with fighter, because they unlock 3rd level powerfulls spells (such as Conjure Animal) at lvl9 and a third spellslot at lvl11, when the fighter unlock a new extra attack at lv11. The fighter can only compensates it with his one (or two) extra ability score improvment and buy powerfull feats with
I really enjoyed this analysis! Very well done! Thanks!
I hope you do end up making an Arcane Archer build. It's a subclass I've always liked thematically and I'd like to see it work. In general, I personally prefer to see optimizers taking on the challenge of making weaker options work as opposed to just seeing a slight variation on an already proven build (unless there's some major twist added on). There's a lot of cool flavor attached to subpar class options and it's always appreciated to see effort put into redeeming them.
One "standard" way to eliminate the outliers is to use the median instead of the mean.
For those less math-minded, that means the rank of the middle subclass in the group.
If you do that, the rankings are different. However, they still end up in the same group (high, middle, low).
The warlock is perhaps the most interesting with a bi-modal distribution. 4 high and 4 low.
1) Wizard - Bladesinger (19)
2) Bard - Glam/Swords (27)
3) Druid - Stars (37)
4) Paladin - Glory (41)
5) Cleric - Life (53)
6) Warlock - Fathomless/Celestial (39/77) 58?
7) Sorceror - Draco/Wild (62/70) 66?
8) Ranger - Beast (74)
9) Fighter - Eldritch/Arcane (76/83) 79.5?
10) Barbarian - Totem/Storm (80/91) 85.5?
11) Rogue - Scout (94)
12) Artificer - Artificer/Armorer (98)
13) Monk - Open Hand (110)
So I decided to make a spreadsheet for this: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11jacKYSavssSPw7MJTEtaRp3wghlSF1jbGW7QhhhQc0/
The mean of all the subclasses is useful for gauging many people taking completely random choices. The median is similar, however, it ignores the extremes (which is sometimes good, sometimes bad). However, neither really does anything for when people have a rough idea of what is good, or have looked through the subclasses quickly and picked the best looking ones to then choose from randomly. To this end, I wanted to see the effect of taking the top 4 subclasses for each class and taking the average of those.
Here are the results:
# Class Avrg
1 Wizard 6.00
2 Druid 21.25
3 Bard 22.00
4 Cleric 23.50
5 Warlock 24.00
6 Paladin 24.25
7 Sorcerer 26.50
8 Fighter 45.00
9 Ranger 54.00
10 Barbarian 76.25
11 Rogue 79.00
12 Artificer 87.25
13 Monk 101.50
The major thing I noted here is how, other than the Wizard, there is a very close grouping for the full casters and Paladin. In fact, I would say they are almost equal.
Afterwards, the values spreadout a fair bit for the other half casters and non-casters.
However, perhaps just the top 3 might be a better fit for randomly picking amonst the best?:
# Class Avrg
1 Wizard 5.33
2 Cleric 15.67
3 Druid 16.00
4 Warlock 19.33
5 Sorcerer 19.33
6 Bard 20.33
7 Paladin 21.00
8 Fighter 35.00
9 Ranger 47.33
10 Barbarian 75.00
11 Rogue 75.33
12 Artificer 80.00
13 Monk 99.33
Two classes (Cleric and Druid) have formed a noticeable lead over the other others in that grouping, breaking that close grouping amonst those 6. That said, the close groupings still exist for 4-7.
I then wanted to see what happened if I ignored the S-Tier subclasses that are meant to be broken, and then take the next top 3:
# Class Avrg
1 Wizard 6.67
2 Warlock 19.33
3 Sorcerer 19.33
4 Bard 20.33
5 Paladin 21.00
6 Druid 27.33
7 Fighter 35.00
8 Cleric 46.67
9 Ranger 47.33
10 Barbarian 75.00
11 Rogue 75.33
12 Artificer 80.00
13 Monk 99.33
This is very interesting. It has pushed Cleric down to being just above the Ranger, and substantially below the Fighter - Echo Knight and Rune Knight are doing pretty well and dragging Fighter up a fair bit. Druid is also pretty hurt, with only Shepherd hitting particularly well here and then Druid being dragged down by the next two subclasses. Clerics and Druids were the two that pulled away previously, showing that the top subclasses are really dragging them up in the averages.
Oh, and Wizard doesn't seem to care what we do.
To finalise it all, the top of each, without S-Tier:
# Class
1 Wizard 5
2 Sorcerer 6
3 Druid 9
4 Bard 10
5 Warlock 11
6 Paladin 16
7 Fighter 20
8 Ranger 21
9 Cleric 44
10 Artificer 58
11 Barbarian 68
12 Rogue 72
13 Monk 85
Hopefully, someone finds that as interesting as I did.
As someone who made and is playing an Armourer build, I think your ranking is spot-on. The only build that can really work is a dedicated tank build, and even then pretty much the only reason it manages to "work" like that is because your other options are like... the shitty dueling spell and Ancestral Guardians, and unlike either of them this one can theoretically work 24/7 since it's not tied to any resources.
I was going to argue this because you can make other builds but then I realized that it really takes a bunch of work to make those builds. Like using a homunculus to throw magic stones and/or an animate object to use wands while you blast as well. That's cool but does take a lot of set up and work to actually pull off.
Just binged this series, great overview
This video series is a fantastic resource for players!